Build Advice What next with PC - helping me answer the "what do you want for Christmas" question

[hep1tom]

Hi there,

It is that time of year when everyone asks me "what do you want for Christmas?" and I have no response... but had some inspiration today and thought perhaps asking for a contribution to upgrading my PC (that I primarily use for gaming) could be a nice idea. But I have no idea what could 'enhance' my current setup - an old housemate helped me build it, and I'm not savvy enough to work out where I could be improving performance / the experience I have. Any thoughts from people would be most welcome - I'm thinking something in the £100 to £350 margin (could be one thing or a few things), as I can 'top-up £' where needs be to get something.

My current spec is below:

• GPU - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
• Board - Asus Z170-A
• PSU - Corsair CX 750M
• CPU - Intel Core i5-6600K
• 8GB Ram
• Monitor 60HZ (an Asus VP278H), 1920x1080
• Windows 10

Apologies if wrong place to ask, but any thoughts or inspiration most welcome! Thanks, hep1tom

 

[Lafong]

What's your drive situation?

Do you need more capacity?

Definitely get rid of any spinning hard drive if at all possible.

That's a modest power supply, but maybe you stick with it if you don't change the video card?

6600k is a good horse getting long in the teeth. May be adequate for your use, but it would likely be near the top of the list for any significant upgrade idea....which would then force you into a new motherboard.

What's your cooler situation? Maybe stick with it if you don't change CPUs.

350 pounds would go a long way toward a major upgrade if you only needed 2 parts: CPU and motherboard. Not as far if wanted to move to 16 GB RAM.

At the low end, spending only 100 pounds; I'd probably get rid of spinning drives as first priority if I had any of them. Any SSD could be later carried over to future builds.

 

[hep1tom]

Thanks lafong, currently got a 1tb harddrive, and a 250gb SSD at the moment. Cooler situation just a few 'standard fans'. What would be a good CPU & motherboard combo be nowdays? Assume what i've got currently couldn't handle a straight move on to 16GB ram?

 

[Lafong]

Thanks lafong, currently got a 1tb harddrive, and a 250gb SSD at the moment. Cooler situation just a few 'standard fans'. What would be a good CPU & motherboard combo be nowdays? Assume what i've got currently couldn't handle a straight move on to 16GB ram?

What you've got now COULD handle a move to 16 RAM, but best advice would be to get ALL new RAM, rather than add 8 to current 8. But that would NOT be priority number one to me in your circumstances.

What's on the 250 SSD? Just OS and applications? How full?

What's on the 1 TB spinning drive? Just data? Just "games"? How full?

Plausible motherboard and CPU: An Intel B660M board from Gigabyte or MSI; cost in US near 160 dollars; CPU might be an Intel i3-12100 on up to i5-12400 if budget allows; US cost 200 or less; don't know UK prices.

Cooler....I meant CPU cooler, not case fans. What specific CPU cooler do you use on that 6600k right now?